There’s no doubt about it; social media has changed how we receive and process news. We’re all stunned, heartbroken, angry, and saddened by the news coming out of Connecticut today, news that at this moment seems too horrific for me to even name.

With millions of people responding on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, I think it’s important to recognize that we all grieve in different ways. We find ourselves in different stages and manifestations of that grief—disbelief, anger, stunned silence, the need to do something, the need to exert some kind of control in a world that seems so desperately out of control—and so we have to be patient with one another, gracious when our grief takes different forms.

When someone very close to me died a few years ago, I remember my dad telling me that it’s important to allow people to grieve in ways that don’t necessarily make sense to me. It’s important not to correct people whose grief takes a different form than my own, he said.

So let’s grieve together. And let’s give one another the space to be shocked, to be pissed, to appeal to God, to be angry with God, to find peace in God, to question God, to want to take action, to want to wait, to blame, to pray, to be afraid, to be speechless, to vent, to lament, to speak up, to be silent, to pull our families close to us, to need some time alone.

Let’s not tell each other how to grieve. Let’s just grieve.